Potassium chloride is a halide metal salt formed by chloride and potassium. The use of potassium chloride is widely diffused in medical environment as a substitute of this electrolyte in the organism. Potassium chloride is used in cooking as well.
Moreover, potassium chloride is widely used also as a fertilizer to increase productivity in wide range of plantations.
There are some known brine processing routes for production of fertilizing grade potassium chloride, in addition to processes to obtain salts from different sources. However, these routes present significant energy consumption.
The step of submitting brine to concentration can be carried out through multistage evaporation, evaporation by thermal vapor recompression—TVR, evaporation by mechanical vapor recompression—MVR, or by combinations of multistage evaporation and/or TVR and/or MVR.
The step of cooling the first liquid content can be carried out by vacuum cooling, cooling through heat exchangers or by a combination of vacuum and cooling through heat exchangers.
The stage of performing the enrichment of the second solid content can be carried out through cold leaching, direct flotation of potassium chloride or elutriation.
The enrichment of the second solid content may also be carried out through combinations between operations of multistage evaporation and thermal vapor recompression—TVR and operations of multistage evaporation by mechanical vapor recompression—MVR.
The process of the present invention may further comprise a brine preheating stage prior to submitting the brine to concentration. This brine preheating can be performed by surface condensers.